Alejandro Escovedo’s forthcoming album, “The Crossing” (due Sept. 14), feels like a visceral, sad and sublime reaction to President Trump’s immigration policies. But the LP’s punk rock rave-ups, minimalist ballads and spoken word meditations on clashes of culture have washed around in the back of Escovedo’s brain for years, maybe his entire life.

Escovedo, the child of Mexican immigrants, has used personal experiences to fuel his art since his work in such first-wave punk bands as the Zeros and the Nuns in the late ’70s. But “The Crossing” marks a broader, braver commitment to his history, expanding on that past to explore how borders create friction and heartbreak.

“The album is really the story of these two young men, one from Mexico and one from Italy, but a lot of it is thinly veiled stories from my life,” he said ahead of his City Winery show tonight. “I’m a first-generation American and so a lot of this came from what happened while I was growing up in Texas and California.”

The protagonists in “The Crossing” — Salvo from Italy and Diego from Mexico — find work in a Texas restaurant while they wrestle with dreams, identity, racism and the hopes and fears of ancestral ghosts.

Escovedo composed the record with Italian writer Antonio Gramentieri to get outside his own head. From his own life, he drew inspiration from stories his father told him. To bring the story to the present, he and Gramentieri spoke with kids throughout Texas about their experiences.

“Writing it, we spent a lot of time driving through little towns in Texas and talking to young people, a lot of Dreamers in Dallas, where I live,” Escovedo said. “We wanted it to be a timeless piece. Initially migration was in search of food and shelter, in search of greener pastures. Then it became immigration when borders came up. But we all come from the same place, we all share the same stories. When people don’t understand that we are all one, we become fearful of other people. I wanted the album to have that history and not just be about now.”

Despite being a quintessential American album, Escovedo recorded the whole thing in Italy.

“There was something about being in Italy, so far from it all, that liberated me and let me run wild with the story,” he said.

Despite exploring the topic over generations, there are shout-outs directed right at the current administration.

With help from a few punk legends (MC5’s Wayne Kramer, the Stooges’ James Williamson) on the album, Escovedo cranks the amps and growls on “Fire and Fury”: “I can’t believe they want to take my dad away/How many times must he prove his innocence.”

Later, on the long, slow string-filled closing title track, he sings, “I lost my innocence to the ICE.”

“For a while it seemed like we were taking some steps forward as a country and people,” he said. “When we take steps back, I need to sing about that, let people know just what that means.”